April 2Rajiv responds: This is one of my best interviews, as it clarifies
many issues raised since the book came out. I urge you to read it and
post your own comments on that blog please.

April 3

Harmeet Singh's review
Has anyone read the review by Harmeet Singh, now posted on Amazon
page for the book? I wonder if anyone could comment on the
Brhadarankyaka Upanishad line he...

April 4

Kannada scholars digested and forgottenVenkat shares: Senior Litterateur and scholar Prof T V Venkatachala Shastry said that the contribution of the Western scholars (missionaries) in popularising Kannada was invaluable but unfortunately, what is disheartening is the fact that the local scholars who had helped the foreign scholars have been forgotten to the extent that there are no
documentations on these scholars at all....

Ravi adds:
"....KATHRI ( an interesting acronym in itself), the Karnataka Theological
Research Institute, in association with Central Institute of Indian
Languages (CIIL) - presumably a Govt undertaking with it's own
bureaucratic-political trajectory. So in essence the KATHRI is carrying
forward the colonial / missionary torch aided & abetted by Indian
govt policies......

As Rajiv has said before, once a culture feels proud of
"outsourcing" it's knowledge production to wonderful foreigners &
theologians, it can merely watch from sidelines as control of categories
is wrested away from it...."

Priyadarshi comments:"...1. This is not the case with Kannada alone but with many other Indian
languages. Naturally, the Western scholars/translators received aid and
input from local experts of any language. In erstwhile Fort William
College of Calcutta, where several modern Indian languages were
developed, there were Pundits and Asst Pundits to help the British
scholars. History records some names like Mrityunjaya Tarkalankar and
Jagganath Tarkalankar.

2. However, modern nationalists loathe to admit that
there all modern Indian languages are directly or indirectly indebted to
English. There was hardly any prose literature in any Indian language
prior to the advent of English...

3. True fruition of modern literature in Kannada
happened in 1920s, much after the rise of modern literature in other
Indian languages. This is perhaps because today's Karnataka was
administratively fragmented into various parts. ... Fortunately, it was an English
education officer who found out that the language of this part was
actually Kannada not Marathi.

4. R.S. Mugali in his book History of Kannada Language
(Sahitya Academy, 1976) gives credit to Christian missionaries like
Kerry, Maccerrel, Rieve, Kittel, Rice and Caldwell for developing modern
Kannada language although their main objective might have been to
spread Christianity. It is but natural they could not work without local
support.

5. Let us not blame the West alone. There may be any
number of Indian academics who had benefited from local experts and
then summarily dumped them without sharing the limelight..."

Rajiv responds:
"I am copying my AAR Conference paper presented at the panel discussed in
message 2497. You will see the Kannada scholars becoming digested in a
new light of a wider syndrome:

Panch (Five) Asymmetries in theDialog of Civilizations:
A Hindu View...

To
have
a genuine dialog of civilizations, the 'other' side (in this case the
Hindus) must be present as themselves and not via proxy, must be
able to use their own framework to represent themselves, and must be free
to anthropologize and criticize the west without fear of undue
censorship or academic reprisal. However, five asymmetries resulting from
the present imbalance of power often obstruct this dialog today.
Before describing these asymmetries, I wish to clarify that I represent neither pole of what has become a bipolar fight for the representation of Indian culture: I am not representing the Hindutva view, which should not
be conflated with Hinduism, because: (i) Hindutva is a
political mobilization, (ii) it is a recent 20th century construct in
response to contemporary situations, and (iii) it assumes a specific
(reductionist) package of stances, whereas most Hindus pick and choose
positions from an a la carte menu of choices.....
The five asymmetries, of which the first three concern academic translationsof Indic culture, are:....

I. Anthropologist Versus Native Informant:
While unintentional in some cases, scholars often seem to operate on the notion that distance (intellectual, cultural, geographic) produces objectivity.But distance has been the antithesis of dialog, and reciprocity is the key to dialog.[2]Western
anthropologists
use native informants, who are typically poor and lesseducated
villagers paid to produce the data, and who typically place
thescholar on a pedestal because of their own limited material resources
and theglorification of India's xenophile elite...

II. Western Scholar of Texts Versus Pandit:
The use of pandits
is another method by which the west re-maps Indianculture. Many pandits
are simple and straightforward, not aggressive comparedto many western
scholars, not into power games or concern for royalty orintellectual
property rights, and are trusting of western intentions.
Themis-appropriation of basmati rice and other intellectual property may
be usedas an analog to appreciate that the Indian ethos does not
emphasize personalownership of know how (including spiritual knowledge),
and that some of whatthe west does is unethical and exploitative as per
the pandits' own system ofprofessional ethics....

III. Cognitive Scientist Versus Yogi/Meditator:
The
laboratory
measurement of higher states of consciousness achieved by advanced yogis
and meditators is at the cutting edge of transpersonal and humanistic
psychology, mental health, neuroscience, and phenomenology. And
some Indic theoretical models are at the center of the
philosophy of quantum physics based emerging worldviews. But many ancient
Hindu-Buddhist inner science discoveries are being mis-appropriated
and/or plagiarized:

'Lucid Dreaming' is the western name for Indo-Tibetan nidra yoga, and Stanford's Stephen LaBerge is nowadays the acknowledged discoverer.

Herb
Benson
repackaged TM into his 'Relaxation Response' and now runs a
multimillion dollar business based at Harvard, claiming these as his discoveries. Numerous spin-offs in mainstream stress management and management consulting theories came from this source.

Rupert
Sheldrake
recently 'came out' in an interview acknowledging that his famous
theory known as 'Morphogenic Resonance' was developed while researching
in India's ashrams.

Ken
Wilbur started out very explicitly as an interpreter of Sri Aurobindo's
philosophy for the benefit of psychologists, but now places himself as the discoverer on a higher pedestal.

Esalen
Institute
appropriated J. Krishnamurti and numerous other Indic thinkers into
what its contemporary followers regard as it own 'New Worldview'.

Thomas
Berry, Brother Keating (successor to Bede Griffiths), and others have
constructed the New Liberal Christianity, using Indic appropriations.
Jewish scholars have likewise constructed the 'non-dualistic Kabala'
based on Vedanta.

This is only part of a long list:
the core of the emerging 'western'worldview and cosmology involving
physics, cognitive science, and biology isbeing rapidly built upon
repackaged Indic knowledge,.....

IV. RISA Versus HinduDiaspora:
The
Hindu
Diaspora, which includes non-Indian Hindus in yoga-meditation centers,
is usually kept out of the RISA fortress. Huston
Smith, in the Spring2001 Harvard Divinity Bulletin, describes certain
western scholars' attitude towards Hinduism as "colonialism updated".
When compared to science,technology, business, and other professions
where Indians now routinely achieve the highest positions, Indology
remains perhaps the last holdout of colonialism. Indians with self-esteem
and experience in dealing with westerners are seldom included as dialog
representatives in a joint enterprise to study the tradition.
Meanwhile, Indian Marxists and Macaulayites—born again
as 'progressives' after the Cold War—dominate India's academe, and often
power broker and become strategic allies with western academicians as
experts on India.But there are many contradictions in these intellectual
sepoys: (i) While many are Subalternists, India's masses, classics and
culture are often alien to them, and they disrespect and caricaturize
Hinduism in a reductionist Eurocentric way. (ii) Instead, they know
mainly western thought and hermeneutics. (iii) Yet, their careers
are based on being proxies for the very tradition that they regard as a
scourge.[5]
The phenomenon of South Asianizing, which has emerged from this
confluence of excessive ethnography and Indian Macaulayism, has subverted
Hinduism's universal truth claims.....

V. Asymmetric Hermeneutical Power:
There is asymmetry in the license to criticize: RISA and its scholars control the vyakhya (i.e. hermeneutics, right to criticize, what is deemed important and interesting, etc.) , manage the adhikara
(i.e.appoint those in charge of gate-keeping the academic channels), and
sometimes even field the persons who represent the Hindus. Any in-bred,
pedigree-based, closed system is likely to slip into stagnation.
When opposed by truly independent outsiders (i.e. those who do not
seek visas, PhDs, jobs, tenure, etc.), some RISA members have resorted
to intimidating name-calling to affect censorship.Sometimes, this attack
on the messenger deflects from the message. The trial of Sri Ramakrishna
in absentia, with no defense side allowed, is an example of what happens under such asymmetries of power.
But Hindus have a long standing tradition of making fun of their gods,since
they do not fear blasphemy. Hindus can summon a god, argue and make fun of him, even scold him with impunity—in a process called 'nindastuti'....

....6. As one example only, those adopting a literalist interpretation
of Indian texts are often deemed as fanatics, nationalists,and
fundamentalists. But in Bible Studies, literalist interpretations are
a well-respected hermeneutical approach. George Gallup's book of surveys
of Americans' religious beliefs says that over 50% of all Americans
believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible. Yet, we don't
denounce the majority of Americans as fundamentalist-fanatics. In the
case of Islam, the Koran is viewed as the literal history and not
metaphorically by the mainstream.Personally, I prefer the metaphorical
interpretation of all religious texts,but feel that literalist
interpretations are a person's right without facing abuses...."

[there is a lot of material in this post belowthat provides us a glimpse of the kind of debate that was ongoing in the 1990s. I'm heavily excerpting. Be sure to read the content in its entirety from the egroup link below].

In the 1990s,
I was having numerous debates and arguments with the US academy over
their Hinduphobia. At that time hardly anyone else in the diaspora
supported me and most of the "leaders" felt things were going just
great. "Look at how many temples we have built" I was told. "I go to
campuses and nobody bothers me for practicing my faith", said many. I
went to as many academic events as I could to debate them, and found
myself all alone. The focus of "activists" was 100% India based -
Ayodhya fund-raising, impressing visiting politicians from India, etc. I
got tired of making attempts to gather support on US based issues.
Indians were drunk in their new wealth and material success in the US.
Nobody wanted to hear any bad news or rock the boat.

Swami
Tyagananda had refused to go public with his criticism of Kripal's new
book (that won him AAR awards and a Harvard post-doc to launch his
career!) which was attacking Sri Ramakrishna and Swami Vivekananda's
integrity. He said "I am a monk and we dont fight". I worked with him
privately and got the first copy of his critique posted online at my own
site. Once the precedence was set, he also posted it at other places
himself and went public with his critique. My articles starting with Risa Lila on Sulekhastarted a huge storm that blew up in the faces of the academics; and
all these "Hindu activists" were still sleeping, holding "like-minded
people's" meetings to discuss petty issues and egos. No sign of
strategic thinking at all. Disconnected from the ground reality.

Thats
when I decided to take the war into the academy by using the internet,
until such time as the academics could no longer ignore me. This worked.
Jack Hawley started a "research" project called "Hinduism Here" which
was projected as a way to study American-based Hinduism. Its real
intention was to dig up dirt on various Hindu groups and send this
material to US authorities for investigation. His spies were caught in
Arsha Vidya Gurukulam and it sparked a debate within that organization
on what posture ought to be taken towards such intrusions. At one AAR
conference, Harvard's top scholar on Hinduism said that the FBI ought to
be doing surveillance on Hindu groups just as it does on Islamic ones!

The
material below is from one of the AAR panels that I was invited to more
than a decade ago. It was meant to serve as a sort of "in house
hearing" of my gripes. I was sandwiched between speakers faithful to the
academy at both ends, some making nuanced and oblique hints of
criticism, but muted and within the boundaries of permitted criticism. I
used to run one of the largest egroups in those days, called
"IndicTraditions" where many of you got to know me first......

Infinity Foundation
supported dozens of scholars to shift the discourse. We learned a lot on
how the machinery works versus what it appears to be from the outside.
Gradually things have changed quiet a lot. Hinduphobia is less blatant
but its still there. Today there is a
new breed of leaders who dont know any of this history or background.
The sangh has tried to reinvent itself and even co-opt many of these new
groups that started independently. Many scholars and organizations we backed had sold out
along the way - an old story of how the west has perfected this art of
co-opting Indians very diplomatically. Many of the old guard of activist
leaders (who had blocked my initiatives in the 1990s) as well as
scholars I had funded and who later sold out, have now come together to
launch "pioneering" initiatives to bring a new kind of presence of
dharma in the academy. I wish them well. Many are well meaning and
should succeed. Others are self-serving - the same old minds repackaged
with new vocabulary that they have picked up from all this new
discourse. ...
Defamation/Anti-Defamation –Hindus in Dialogue with the Western Academy
A panel discussion held at the annualmeeting of the American Academy of Religion in Denver on November 17, 2001.

Introduction

John Stratton HawleyBarnard College, Columbia University

In
the course of the last five years, the form, content, history,
andauthority of Western academic scholarship about Hinduism have been
vigorouslyquestioned by practicing Hindus. Major landmarks along the way
have been theinternational conference on "Revisiting Indus Saraswati
Age and AncientIndia" (Atlanta, 1996), the AAR panel on "Who Speaks for
Hinduism?"(Orlando, 1998), and the renewed controversy about Jeffrey
Kripal's Kali's Child in the light of Swami Tyagananda's rejoinder Kali's Child Revisited, or, Didn't Anyone Check the Documentation? (distributed at the AAR, 2000). Recently the institutional reality of the AAR itself has become a target of criticism.
This
panel is an attempt to gather various strands of that debate,
includingthe voices of some of the major participants to date.
Inevitably, we findourselves re-engaging controversies that are already
familiar to many readers,but our principal hope is to step aside from
the particulars of these debates and try to understand better the
dynamics that underlie them. As our title suggests, we feature a sense of
defamation, experienced in very different ways by different members of
the panel. In addition to providing perspectives on this history of
tension, hurt, and attack, several of our panelists draw attention to
moments of concord and cooperation.
The text that follows is a
written representation of what our panelists saidin Denver. Inmost
cases, it is the text from which panelists they actually read.
Rajiv Malhotra's contribution is the exception to this rule, in that he
spoke from notes; those notes form the basis for the text he presents
here. There was also lively discussion. Alas, we cannot reproduce that
discussion here, but we hop that by publishing the remarks on which it
was based, we will allow it to continue.
In the course of the year
2001, several statements circulated in anticipation of our panel at the
AAR. I would like to quote from three of these as a way of marking the
terrain on which our discussion takes place. They provide us with three
signposts—three points of orientation to keep in mind as wade into the
conversation that follows. The first characterizes that conversation as a
game. The second sees it as a sort of cold war. The third suggests what
it might mean if it were to be seen from the perspective of a court of
law.Signpost 1: The Game
The first of these
signposts was erected by one of our panelists, RajivMalhotra, on
February 15, 2001, as a message to hcs-l@...:
"It's basically a
game, in which one side controls the rules, appointsthe referees, and
even fields most of the players on behalf of the other side!It started
with 18th and 19th century Indology, now re-labeled as Orientalism and
found to be heavily catering to missionary, colonialist, and
racist agendas. The tradition was established that Western scholars study
'primitive'cultures through informants, and there was no pretence of
symmetry or honest conversation as peers. At that time, the political
power asymmetry required that this had to be so.
"But the
methodology remains largely unchanged today. Notice how 'Hindu reactions'
must be represented by scholars who 'gather data' on the
informants 'reactions and not by bringing in Hindus to speak for
themselves. The three examples of proposed panels I mention above
[including the panel we reproduce here - ed.] suffer from this
asymmetry."Signpost 2: The Cold War
The
second signpost was staked down by Dr. S. Kalyanaraman, a member of
the listserv Indictraditions. Anticipating the AAR's annual meeting in
November, and with it the convening of a panel just such asours, he
wrote as follows to Indictraditions@yahoogroups.com on April 1, 2001:
.....

Reflections on Hindu Studiesvis-á-vis Hindu Practice

Swami Tyagananda

The Vedanta Society, BostonTwo
years ago, after I was invited to join the United Ministry at Harvard
asthe Hindu chaplain, I was curious to know how the chaplains working on
thecampus were connected with Harvard's Divinity School. When I asked
aminister about it, she shrugged her shoulders and said, "We don't have
toomuch connection with them really. They study religion whereas we are practitioners."This
answer surprised me. I had naively assumed that since both the
chaplains and the Divinity School were involved with religion, they would
naturally share common interests and goals.
Later when I got to
know more people on the campus—at Harvard as well as inother colleges in
and around Boston—Igot a clearer picture. I saw that there was indeed a
wall separating religious studies from religious practice, but it was
not uncrossable. Some scholars are practitioners and some practitioners
are scholars. While there is often a tension between what ministers think
and what ordinary practitioners believe—and this tension complicates the
picture—we still must acknowledge thatthe scholar/practitioner divide
is real and it merits discussion.
Although much of what I say will
probably be applicable to religious studyand practice in general, I
shall use examples from Hinduism studies in the Westand from the life of
practicing Hindus, since that is the context of thisdialogue.
Many
factors are responsible for the split between the academy and
thepracticing community. One factor is the focus of the two groups.
Those whostudy Hinduism in an academic setting want to know about
Hinduism, andnot all scholars want that knowledge to influence the
direction of their lives.This is not to deny that many of those who do
study Hinduism do so forreligious reasons. On the other hand, practicing
Hindus study their traditiontoo, but they do so with the clear intent
of transforming their lives. Thisdifference in focus leads to differing
approaches to Hindu philosophy andreligious personalities.....

On the Gore and Glory of Western Indology

V. V. Raman Rochester Institute of Technology

The
field of inquiry and commentary which has come to be known as
Indologyhad its origins, like Sinology, Egyptology, and other such
disciplines, in theexploratory, intrusive, and scholarly interests of
European colonialism,missionary zeal, and Enlightenment. Many centuries
earlier, Islamicexpansionism had shown a similar enthusiasm for
understanding, interpreting,translating, and critiquing the literature,
philosophy, and traditions of otherpeoples.
Aside from genuine
intellectual curiosity, there were at least two othermotivations for the
Western pursuit of Indology. One was the need to have aclear
understanding of the history and culture of the people the
colonialistswanted to (had to) govern.The otherwas to use that
knowledge to persuade Hindus that theirs was a religion which,with all
its inner light, needed to be replaced by a better religion,
namely,Christianity. This is why not only independent scholars, but
alsogovernment-affiliated thinkers and missionaries took interest in
Indology.
For almost two centuries, as a result of the efforts of
Western scholars,with ever increasing collaboration with Hindu academics
and religious thinkers,Indology has been flourishing and evolving.
Thanks to the untiring dedicationof such people, much of ancient Hindu
history has been reconstructed. Thanks toa number of Western
archaeologists the even more ancient Indic civilizationswere unearthed.
The rich treasures of Sanskrit as well as Tamil and othervernacular
literatures have been translated, commented upon, and propagated tothe
world by the exertions of Western scholars and linguists. Herein lies
theglory of Western Indological scholarship.
However, the
colonizing and Christianizing motivations of early Indologistsare, in
retrospect, offensive to Neo-Hindus today. More regrettably, in theview
of some, many Indian minds have been transformed to the Western mode
ofthinking and analyzing historical and spiritual matters. This is
drasticallydifferent from traditional modes. As a result, a deep chasm
has arisen not onlybetween English-educated Indian scholars who think
like their Westerncolleagues and their non-English speaking compatriots
whose approach toreligion and tradition are untouched by modern ways,
but also between anawakened body of modern Indians who have recognized
the self-serving Euro-centricinterpretations, unintentional
mis-portrayals, and intentional distortions ofIndia's rich culture,
ancient traditions, and complex religions. All this isthe gore of
Western Indological scholarship.
The happy collaboration between
Western and Indian scholars has thus beensubject to some serious
assaults. A number of post-modern Hindu thinkers havebeen seeing in much
of Indology, past and present, many culture-insensitive andracially
motivated factors with more hidden agenda than had been surmised
thusfar. A new movement has already taken its initial steps whose goal
is toexpose, condemn, and keep away what is considered to be
cold-bloodedscholarship with a hidden-agenda with little reverence or
sensitivity for theliving religion that is Hinduism. In this new vision,
which incidentally, has anumber of Western scholars among its
protagonists, a great many supposedlysympathetic Indologists are, in
fact, wolves in sheep's skin.
...

When Scholarship Matters:The Indo-Aryan Origins Debate

Edwin Bryant Rutgers University

Everyone
in the field of South Asian studies by now knows about, and islikely
exasperated by, the debate over the origins of the
Vedic-speakingIndo-Aryans. We have all, I think, heard something of the
voices that haveemerged, primarily from Indian archaeologists and
historians, as well as fromthe Hindu diaspora, challenging the idea of
an external origin for thislanguage and cultural group, and claiming an
Indigenous origin for the Vedicculture (a view I have termed the
'Indigenist' position). Fueled by suspicionof the racist and elitist
biases of colonial Indology, and, according to itsdetractors, by the
imperatives of Hindu nationalism, this view provokes endlessdiscussions,
as anyone with the patience to follow the Indo-Aryan migrationdebates
on the Indology nets and other conferences in the West can attest.
Thesedebates all-too-often degenerate into emotional name-calling, as
accusations of'neo-colonial chauvinism' from one side, and assertions of
'Hindu nationalisticdogma' from the other, inevitably start to be
bandied about, while thescholarly value of the discussions rapidly
evaporates.
Most western Indologists, on the whole, have remained
unconvinced by thelimited exposure they have had with the all-too-often
selective quality of theIndigenist arguments they encounter, which they
view as indicative of anationalism that seeks authenticity in
unscholarly interpretations of historyand pre-history, and some scholars
are becoming exasperated by the polemicalrehashing of the racist
genesis of western Indology. While the debate is viewedby most western
Indologists as, at best, peripheral to serious scholarship and,at worst,
as an annoying—and, in the present-day Indian context,
politicallydangerous—disturbance, it is ferociously contested in India,
where it issituated in much more of a mainstream academic context.
The
Indigenist stress on the continuity of Indian history, and the
genericuse of the term 'Vedic culture', with its ahistorical and
monolithic overtonesand troublesome implications for minority cultures,
is the feature of the'Indigenist' position, that is most troubling to
opponents of this view. Theconcerns of those who fear the ideological
corollaries underpinning suchinterpretations are by now well-known: if
the Vedic Indo-Aryans are interpretedas being indigenous to India, then
the 'Vedic Civilization' and all thatdeveloped from it can be construed
as 'truly Indian' and all subsequentcultural groups known to have
immigrated into India can be depicted as'Others'. Indigenism,
consequently, is generically stereotyped as a discoursepromoting
communal tension.
...

Defamation and Diaspora Hindus:
Notes on Internet Discussions

VasudhaNarayananUniversity of Florida

Should
there be a lakshman rekha, a line self-imposed or otherwise,
thatscholars should not cross? If so, who should draw the line and who
should moveit?
My task today is to talk about "defamation" on the
internet. Thereis some ambiguity attached to the term in the context of
today's discussion: wedeal with the alleged defamation of Hinduism on
the one hand, and defamation ofscholars on list serves and web pages on
the other. I will spend most of mytime today outlining a list of issues
that concern some Hindus about listserves where most of the discussants
are non-Hindu. I will focus primarily onRISA-L and, to a lesser extent,
on Indology. In this enterprise, I would liketo acknowledge the help of a
former Indian/Hindu student from the University of Florida who took
some advanced levelreading courses on Vedanta, specifically the Sri
Vaishnava tradition, with me.He would like to be identified as "a recent
resident in the US, anengineer by profession but very much interested
in scholarly Hindustudies." He sent me a long document with specific
problematic issues inRISA-L, and it seemed to reaffirm the tenor of many
internet discussionscriticizing western scholarship. However, he does
say that this critical reportdoes not mean that he holds the "RISA
scholars in contempt per se;"and says that this is only an anthology on
what he considers to be the"bad aspects."
Many moons ago, when
western scholars studied and wrote about Hinduism,Hindus had little
control over what was said and how information wasinterpreted and
disseminated. The audience for the articles and books was
alsoEuro-American scholars. Obviously that has changed now—we all know
that thereare Indo-American, Hindu scholars in the academy, and second
generation Hindusin our classrooms. More important to our discussion
today, there are manyHindus who are reading and listening in on academic
discussions. While in thepast, there had been groups of Hindus rather
bemused and occasionally evenflattered at the attention that American or
European scholars seemed to lavishon their texts and rituals, now there
are some in the United States who arewary and angered at the way in
which they perceive Hinduism is being portrayedin classrooms and more
particularly at the AAR. It is, of course, hard to getnumbers in this
quest and I certainly do not want to generalize about how"Hindus" feel
about so called "western" scholarship. Justspeaking from my anecdotal
experience, most Hindus are not aware of a greatdeal of "western"
scholarship and have not made an attempt to knowmore about it.

Panch (Five) Asymmetries in theDialog of Civilizations:
A Hindu View

Rajiv MalhotraThe Infinity Foundation

(excerpted earlier in this post)

Toward Context Sensitivity

Ann Grodzins GoldSyracuse University

I
accepted Jack's invitation to join this session with an emotion I can
onlydescribe as dread. Prior to his email, I had firmly decided not to
go to Denver, and indeed hadalready become involved in organizing a
session for AAA (it makes for a killerNovember to do both I can tell
you). A couple of weeks ago, when I thought Ihad better organize my
thoughts, I looked for the AAR file on my computer anddiscovered I had
named the folder, last spring, "Denver01misery". Ihave to say that—in
the wake of September 11 and its aftermath of ongoingviolence—last
spring's dread and misery have seemed to me nothing if not petty,and
even unworthy of further consideration. However, Laurie's email, with
thebold dictionary definitions of "defamation," somewhat re-kindled
bothemotions.
I do not wish to squander my remaining
nine-and-a-half minutes rehearsingthe sorrows of last winter, but it
isn't possible to ignore them completelybecause that is why we are here.
Luckily, I had been reading Saurabh Dube'sstill unpublished book
manuscript Stitches on Time. Saurabh was aparticipant in the "Who
Speaks for Hinduism?" session a few yearsback—a session to which
today's might seem a kind of less mellow, or moremelancholy, sequel. For
some editorial reason I don't understand, hiscontribution was not
included in the JAAR volume that emerged from thatsession, but will be part of his new book which he has given me permission tocite.
Dube
argues that at the heart of the "Who speaks" forum was theanxiety of
Western scholars, "under threat from vociferous critiques of
apostcolonial provenance" and thus fearing that they would be denied
theright to speak. He writes quite evocatively, even poetically,
of"anxieties and aggressions produced within everyday encounters
andquotidian confrontations in academic arenas . . . "—experiences many
of usshare, whatever our religious or ethnic identities. Dube does find
somepotential value in dealing with all of this, a challenge to think
through"the ambiguities and ambivalences, contradictions and challenges,
and predicamentsand possibilities at the heart of the current cultural
politics of identitiesand the contemporary political cultures of
scholarship."
But he also questions the terms in which the
challenge wasformulated. Reasonably enough, he observes, "Many speak
about Hinduism.Some speak around Hinduism. For a few it is perhaps
possible to speak fromwithin Hinduism(s). But speaking for Hinduism? . . . . " Theimplication is; how can that be?
So,
the primary lesson I take from Dube is the foolishness of imagining
orreifying a singular entity over which any of us should indulge in
tug-of-war. Iknow this has been said before, more than once, but it
seems to get just asregularly forgotten.
Dube is not at all
sanguine about the prospects of finding what he calls a"talking cure" to
these problems. Yet, if the ready alternative tothe talking cure in
today's mental health world is a pill, we in academia havenot yet
synthesized a quick chemistry of equilibrium. Thus we find
ourselveshere, trying once again for a talking cure, in a case that
could seem stillmore hopeless.
Rather than embracing hopelessness,
I will suggest that if there is a cureit lies in two related practices:
1) sharing or diffusing any and all claims toauthority among all
concerned; and 2) remaining sensitive to contexts—bothpoints to which I
shall return. But first I do need to explain a little aboutmy own close
encounter with Rajiv Malhotra and the Infinity Foundation, whichwas one
major impetus for Jack's organizing this session.
I don't want to
speak in terms of defamation but of pain. Both parties tothis encounter
were wounded, I believe, in their deepest sense of self. Both,moreover,
felt self-righteous to the bone. In terms of understanding whatactually
took place at last year's AAR, bothparties' memories could not be more
totally at odds. Were we in the same roomat the same time?
Interestingly
enough, my paper—the one Rajiv found objectionable—was aboutthe
workings of memory. And our divergent interpretations of the memory
panelgo to support this paper's major point. Its opening sentences were
these:
Various readings have characterized memory, from one
perspective or another,as a "brightly lit theater of the world"; a
"mirror of the darkabyss of the mind" (both cited in Hutton 1993); the
breaking waves of theocean (Halbwachs 1992); lava that "melts away the
earth" from thedead and makes them live again (old Jewish lady cited in
Myerhof 1992);"not only a spring, flowing from the well of the past, but
also a tomb,whose contents climb like withered ivy to the mind" (Langer
1991: 69);"a roadway full of potholes, badly in need of repair, worked
on day andnight by revisionist crews" (Kirmayer 1996).
I think as
we look at the disparate interpretations from Rajiv and from me asto
what took place in my paper and the session, we can see just such
processes:the revisionist crews are hard at work, the waves of the ocean
are shaping theshore.
To speak from my viewpoint then, briefly:
In my paper about memory I tookexamples from an oral history project
I've been working on, collaborativelywith an Indian co-author, since
1993. These examples were of memories gatheredin interviews with women
and men from a leatherworking community, a few of whomrecollected abuse
by some members of the Kshatriya community, about fifty yearsback,
although often in veiled terms.
The word Hinduism appeared exactly
once in the paper, in the phrase:"devotional expressions within
Hinduism" from the bottom of theritual hierarchy—with a reference to
well-known poets such as Raidas andChokhamela. I argued that, as these
poet-saints had done before them,disempowered persons in the twentieth
century might find in Hinduism's mythicand devotional expressions
sources of and mediums for strength and resistance.
To Rajiv, just
by mentioning disempowered persons residing in India, I wasdefaming
Hinduism. He had come to the AAR tolearn the ways that American
academics dealt with what he prized and held mostdear. What he saw and
heard in my talk, which used slides, was not what Ithought I was
showing: old women, looking back from a happier time in
thenineteen-nineties to recollect some of the sufferings of their
youths, underthe rule of kings and colonizers. Rather, he saw defamation
at work, and theexperience upset him so much he left the session before
it was over. For Rajiv,images of leather workers, and their critiques
of the behaviors of a fewabusive land owners in a small kingdom sixty
years ago, were assaults on hisexistence as a Hindu in America.
He
subsequently published an account of his anger on his web site and in
anewsletter, referring to my paper as an example of "typical
Hindubashing."
Now, I felt assaulted. To me, the words
"Hindu-bashing" burn sobadly I can neither write nor speak them without a
shudder in my gut. I felt asif my twenty years of appreciation for and
participation in Indian culture, andmy whole self, professional and
human, had been assaulted (of course this isthe crux of Euro-American
postcolonial anxiety to which Dube points; this isnot hitting close to
home, this is home).
In his published account, Rajiv wrote about the AARmeetings in general:
What
would shock most Hindus attending this [AAR]for the first time would be
the nature of portrayal of Hinduism in Americaneducation. It is nothing
like what you would find at a temple, ashram or Hindugathering. Rather,
it is mainly an arms-length 'objective' view typicallydominated by
graphic details of the social ills of Hindu society—caste, women'sabuse,
poverty, pollution, superstitions, animal worship, animal sacrifice
andthe like. This material permeates college teaching about Hinduism and
India in a bigway, and in many instances also secondary schools.
Notice
two things in Rajiv's published report that are crucial to mymessage.
One is the statement that goings-on at the AARare "nothing like what you
would find at a temple, ashram or Hindugathering." The other is the
immediate leap from AARto college teaching. The issue of context is very
important in both thesestatements.
Is this an impasse beyond
healing? Frankly, I felt initially that it was—myimpulse was to
withdraw. "Why should I deal with this? I'll go to theanthropology
meetings."
However, nothing is ever that easy. For one thing, I
have always been myselfdeeply concerned with false impressions of
Hinduism prevalent in the US; as Iteach it at the introductory level
almost every year, I have to counteractthese perspectives in my courses.
So I find myself in considerable sympathywith my so-called "defamer"
(who responded with prompt and kindconsideration to my impassioned
protest, immediately removing my name from hispublications and assuring
me that it was nothing personal, and I had simplybeen in the wrong place
at the wrong time). Once again, context is all.
A.K. Ramanujan,
as everyone here of my generation probably knows, wrote awonderful
essay, published in 1990 but widely circulated and cited muchearlier,
titled "Is there an Indian way of thinking?" I wish I couldread you the
whole thing! For the question is phrased in multiple fashions
withmultiple answers and subtle nuances that simply refuse summarizing.
In it Ramansuggests that if there is any characteristic pattern of
Indian thought, it is"context-sensitivity." He finds commonalities of
context-sensitivityin his father who was both a mathematician and an
astrologer, in Sanskritgrammar, in Tamil aesthetic theory, and in the
Laws of Manu—which prescribe(this just happens to be the example
Ramanujan selected) a smaller fine for aKshatriya who defames a Brahmin than for a merchant (hmmm).
As
the Infinity Foundation seeks to showcase the many contributions of
Indiccivilization to the world, I would hope that this subtle one
ofcontext-sensitivity might be included not only as subject but as
practice. (Inmany ways it seems to me to anticipate recent important
philosophical argumentssuch as Donna Haraway's about "situated
knowledge.")
The AAR is, I believe, a context, anacademic forum,
where we should be able to present our current
research—theoreticallyframed—to a limited audience of scholars. If, when
presenting work here, wemake no claims to be speaking "for Hinduism" we
should be taken atour word. There are many other contexts in which we
behave differently. Forexample, I teach almost every year, Religion 285,
a basic introduction toHinduism. In that class I am acutely sensitive
to my position as aEuro-American outsider, in front of an audience that
always includes Hindus aswell as Christians, Jews, and occasional
Muslims and Buddhists. I am acutelyand perpetually alert to the
possibilities for mis-representation, to the concerns of insiders, and to
the prejudices of outsiders. I do not talk ofuntouchable women in that
introductory course. I teach the Upanishads,Valmiki's Ramayana, the
Gita, Kabir and the Virashaivite poets in Ramanujan'sbeautiful
translations.
This teaching has been a learning experience for me
since I first steppedinto the classroom—fall 1985, Cornell, as a new
visiting assistant professor ina class called "Perspectives on South
Asian Culture." I planned touse a lot of films, and the first one I
showed I had thought quite exemplary inits clear illustration of ritual
action: "Hindu Sacraments ofChildhood."
This film features South
Indian Brahmins in the city of Madras, urban elites, performing
elaboraterituals for infants and children that are right out of fourth
centuryGriyasutra texts.
In my class, a young Punjabi, non
Brahmin, raised his hand the minute thefilm was over, and declared in no
uncertain terms, "nobody in India doesrituals like this any more . . . "
As
a novice teacher, I couldn't help but be deflated; my authority had
beenchallenged, and by an insider! I tried to explain that such rituals
mightindeed be rarely performed, or not at all where he was from, but
that someBrahmins in South India were evidently still doing them; or at
least they were,when the film was made . . .. I expect I sounded rattled
and defensive and abit lame. One problem of course is with the false
claims of the title "HinduSacraments of Childhood." This has to
be contextualized as South IndianBrahmins, who care about ritual, in the
nineteen sixties, demonstrating theirvalued cultural performances for
an American Sanskritist and his film crew. Ilearned later from Dan
Smith, the film maker, that the whole thing was staged,as no polluting,
barbaric foreigner would have been allowed to be present atthe real
rituals . . ..
This does not mean that with appropriate
contextualization we could notstill gather some knowledge of life cycle
rituals from these documentaries(though now dated in style as well as
content).
The larger lesson I have carried through another fifteen
years of teachingis always to talk about multiplicity, and context; and
always to offer to shareauthority with students, especially Indian
students, in a fashion they cantrust.
Luckily Indiagave us the
fable of the blind man and the elephant, and I bring this up in myfirst
class. I tell the students of South Asian descent that rural Rajasthan
ismy piece of the elephant, while theirs may be urban Bombay,or New
Jersey(and I must credit and thank Joyce Flueckiger for helping me
arrive at my ownstrategies by telling me hers).
Over the years, I
have significantly altered my syllabus content as a directresponse to
objections and suggestions from Hindu students; I no longer showvideos
with animal sacrifice; I no longer try to deal with Ayodhya in atwo-week
unit at the end—not on the grounds that such conflicts should behidden,
but that two weeks are not enough in an introductory course to
produceanything but confusion—which was clear enough to me from the
Euro-Americanresponse papers. I don't feel as if I am succumbing to
censorship in thesenegotiations, but rather sharing authority and being
sensitive not only tostudent identity issues, but to the context of an
introductory course; acontext that I would insist is quite different
from that of the AAR—which isindeed neither a "temple, ashram or Hindu
gathering," nor a collegeclassroom....

Laurie Patton:
This
paper comes as a joint, practical effort of two scholars ofHinduism—one
Hindu and Indian and the other non-Hindu and white. We
have"represented" each other in our written work and in our
lecturesabout "the other." It is, in part, a narrative of the
corrections,fumblings, and exhilarations between Hindu and non-Hindu
scholarly endeavors.It is also a set of narratives which are informed by
certain Gandhianprinciples, and premised on a model of mutual need,
mutual correction, andloyal oppositions. The Hindu and the non-Hindu
need each other's scholarshipbecause they most profitably are engaged in
a process of mutual correction andcompanionship.
We begin by
simply drawing your attention to the principles laid down byGandhi in
his civil disobedience campaign. In your handout we have translatedthis
into a scholarly version which you see underneath the original
principles.We view these not as anything we practice successfully—not by
any stretch ofthe imagination! Rather we view them as our own
impossible ideals.
Nor do we even necessarily view them as Gandhi
did, a set of principles bywhich to live unwaveringly. Rather, we take
the view that Johannes Fabian doesin his recent article, "Remembering
the Other: Knowledge and Recognitionin the Exploration of Central
Africa" (Critical Inquiry 26: 1999).In this work he scrutinizes
the moments of meeting between two cultures inethnographic narratives:
moments where the power balance is momentarilyrighted—between field
assistant and anthropologist, between explorer andexplored, colonizer
and colonized. These are moments of recognition of need, orof mutual
survival.
We assume that, contrary to the scathing critiques which
corrode ourrelationships in the past years, these moments of
recognition between Hindu andnon-Hindu occur every day; these moments
are part of each of our scholarlyrepertoires, and that these moments,
not the acrimony, are the basic facts ofevery day scholarly life. These
are moments of freedom, in which a"Hindu" scholar can momentarily agree
with a so-called"Western" point of view, and a "Western" scholar
canmomentarily agree with a so-called "Hindu" point of view, withoutfear
of being attacked and branded forever. We argue that these moment
shouldbe foregrounded as much as, if not more than, the critique which
pitchesnon-Hindu against Hindu, Indian against white, in an increasingly
vituperativeand unproductive battle in which neither side is weighed
evenly. We are on verymuch the same side here. We all want more Hindus
to be involved in the study ofHinduism. We all want our Hindu students
to be brave enough to choose SouthAsian studies and not medical school
as the path of least resistance.We assume that these moments of
recognition are also results ofconflict—inevitable and intense, between
Hindu and non-Hindu scholars. They aremomentary conflicts because the
larger project of lokasamgraha, the comingtogether of the world, is for
most of us far more important than any givendisagreement. Moreover, the
mutual correction that both sides submit to, doesnot assume that either
side is always more powerful. Rather, the power balanceis constantly
shifting; hence the need for constant mutual correction within alifelong
companionship. There will be the power of the one who can afford
tovisit a country vs the one who cannot afford the plane ticket; there
will bethe power of the funder vs. the relatively controlled position of
the funded;the power of the one who has better library resources vs.
the one who cannotgather the basic texts necessary for research. At one
time, the anthropologistwill be at a loss, unable to decode the ritual
without the help of a teacher;at another, the foundation money will be
able to dictate the terms of theintellectual project. At another, the
moment will come when a pandit will saythat the Western edition of a
text is good for his work; and a scholar mightsay that the brilliance of
Hinduism that she fell in love with is vibrant andrecognizable in many
forms, including those forms she had previously beensuspicious of. These
are all moments when power must be recognized andrealigned, just as in
Fabian locates these tiny encounters as moments ofcultural change. Both
Hindu and non-Hindu are all momentary satyagrahis in thestruggle for a
truthful and flexible relationship between the Hindu traditionand its
scholars....(Message over 64k, truncated.)

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